This invention relates generally to social networking, and in particular to providing a social networking system page or other display comprising social networking system information common to multiple users.
Social networking systems commonly provide mechanisms allowing users to interact within their social networks. A social networking system user may be an individual or any other entity, such as a business or other non-person entity. Social networking system information that is tracked and maintained by a social networking system may be stored as a social graph, which includes a plurality of nodes that are interconnected by a plurality of edges. A social graph node may represent a social networking system object that can act on and/or be acted upon by another node. A social networking system object may be, for example, a social networking system user, non-person entities, content items, groups, social networking system pages, events, messages, concepts or other social networking system objects, such as movies, bands, or books.
An edge between nodes in a social graph represents a particular kind of connection between the nodes, which may result from an action that was performed by one of the nodes on the other node. Examples of such actions by a social networking system user include listing social networking system objects in a user profile, subscribing to or joining a social networking system group or fan page, sending a message to another social networking system user, making a purchase associated with a social networking system node, commenting on a content item, or RSVP'ing to an event. Thus, if a first user establishes a connection with a second user in the social networking system, the users may be represented by nodes, and the connection may be represented by an edge connecting the nodes. Further, if the first user sends a message to the second user, or tags the second user in a picture stored by the social networking system, the message and tagging may be represented by additional edges between the nodes. Alternatively, the message and picture may be represented by nodes, which are connected by edges to the nodes representing the first and second user. A social graph, therefore, may be used to track the interactions between social networking system objects.
A first social networking system user may want to view some or all of the social graph data, such as social networking system objects and interactions, between or common to a second social networking system user (referred to herein as “relationship data”). Current social networking systems contain interfaces for viewing certain selected communications between two social networking system users, but only in specialized circumstances and only of one particular type of communications. Further, social networking systems contain pages that display limited types of social networking system information in small quantities generally related to one or more social networking system users, but do not contain pages which comprehensively list social graph data common to multiple social networking system users. Social graph data common to multiple social networking system users is decentralized and spread across multiple social networking system pages, which may require navigation that is prohibitively time-consumptive. Thus, there is a need for a solution that aggregates social graph data common to multiple social networking system users and that presents this aggregated data in a single interface to provide an enjoyable, useful, and efficient experience for social networking system users.